A Progressive Conundrum

A recent episode of Jubilee’s Surrounded debate series offered a revealing glimpse into the Progressive conundrum of our time. Surrounded is a popular YouTube program that stages debates in an intense format: one person sits in the center of a circle of twenty others—hence, “surrounded”—and presents four provocative claims, which are debated in four sessions over a course of around an hour and a half. Mehdi Hasan, an American progressive political analyst (born in England to Indian parents), also known for his sharp critiques of Israel and staunch support for the Palestinian cause, accepted the challenge to debate twenty individuals labelled as “far-right”, a label that doesn’t necessarily do this group justice as some were much further from what most would consider far-right politics. After only a few days, the episode has reached more than 10 million views.

The first three-quarters of the program showcased Hasan at his best. His first three claims—“Donald Trump is pro-crime and pro-criminal,” “Donald Trump is defying the Constitution,” and “Immigrants, overall, are good for America”—played to his strengths, and to his audience’s preferences. Hasan, a skilled and aggressive debater armed with facts and rhetoric, easily outmanoeuvred his opponents. At some point one of his debaters had even declared himself to be a Nazi sympathizer and the “biggest fan” of General Franco. When that same opponent proudly called himself a “fascist,” and the audience cheered, Hasan masterfully capitalized on the moment without breaking a sweat. By the midpoint of the show, he had clearly emerged as the rational, articulate and brave voice amid a sea of extreme opposition.

But then came the final claim presented by Hasan for the last debate session: “Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza is ethnic cleansing.”

Here, the dynamic markedly shifted. It was evidently a confusing moment for both sides. While Hasan’s opponents avoided directly condemning Trump—staying true to their ideological roles—an unsettling moment of general agreement emerged. It became clear that Hasan and several of his far-right adversaries (including those who believe in replacement theories) shared eerily similar views on Israel and the Gaza conflict. The first debater agreed to concede to the “ethnic cleansing” label, although insisted that it is a strange policy for Trump to endorse, being a “white Christian man”, eventually solving the problem by concluding that Trump must be “controlled” by unseen forces. The debater left with a friendly handshake to Hasan over agreeing that the US should stop supporting Israel. The next debater took this argument a bit further, repeating that he too doesn’t think it is Trump’s plan because “he is obeying someone else’s plan”, someone else being Israel, beckoning Hasan to come to realizes that “this is something that we can agree on”. They agreed to agree. Another debater repeated the claim that this is not Trump’s plan but a “plan of lobbyists”, asking tacitly whether Hasan had read and agreed with John Mearsheimer’s book The Israel Lobby, renown for being a hateful engine in the anti-Israel discourse. Of course, Hasan has read and agreed with Mearsheimer’s views. There was a sense of relief. Finally, something they could all agree on!

This is where the Progressive conundrum reveals itself: the seemingly strange convergence between the American far right and major parts of the progressive left on Israel. Time and again Hasan and his debaters (some of them absolute neo-Nazis, believers in replacement theories and white privilege) found themselves in uncomfortably common grounds: Israel should lose America’s support, Israel is manipulating American foreign policy. It was a moment of reunion, a reckoning about a mutual enemy, the ultimate enemy, the Jewish State. That moment tells an interesting story about the current political moment.

This unholy alignment is in fact an old and by now a classic one. In his marvellous well-known essay on what he termed “Virtuous Antisemitism” from 1969 the Jewish Austrian thinker and essayist Jean Améry (who has also survived the Holocaust) wrote that “antisemitism resides in anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism as the thunderstorm does in the cloud.” He referred to the new form of antisemitism on the left, as he witnessed it then, as “coexistence” between old and new. Already in 1969, only two years after Israel has officially became a conquering power following its victory in the Six Days War, Amery pointed to the fact that “classical antisemitism is taking on a contemporary guise […]” and that “apparently, one can seamlessly merge the notion of the Jews as the oppressive legionary with the iron tread with that of the Jew as the runaway with the bowed legs” [ referring here to a popular antisemitic visual trope found in caricatures of Jews]. Already in 1969, Amery declared that the new form of antisemitism “is located firmly in the left”, lamenting his own intellectual and social circles, to which in other ways he saw himself as naturally belonging.

Finally, I find it worth mentioning that the fourth debating session, regarding Israel, was the one everyone, including Hasan, were least informed and least fluent in. While Hasan seems to think he knows everything there is to know about the subject, he portrayed his opinions as if they were fact (insisting for example that the conflict is about colonialism, with religion having nothing to do with it), and stretched the truth to his own situational needs (claiming for example that a significant part of Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, are Christian). This manifestation of blatant inaccuracy (if not manipulation), cockiness, and good-old-fashioned disdain (if not hate), served well to facilitate this at-first-glance puzzling alliance between “left” and “right”. In a better world this debate would serve as a warning sign. In our world however it will serve as good entertainment for the cheering masses, intellectual or otherwise, right and left.

Rhona Burns is a postdoctoral associate at Cornell University, where she teaches courses on Israel and Jewish nationalism. For more from Rhona, in Hebrew, see: https://ashpaton.com/